I too was curious about "Bystander Apathy" so I googled it and found the following article:
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/dixon.htmAs a female and as a child growing up I was constantly reminded of the anecdote, "there is safety in numbers". In all honesty I have felt that I was safer in a crowd than in an alley, with one or two people. According to research however, this is a false sense of security due to a phenomenon known as the bystander effect. A person in trouble is much safer when there is only one or two people than if there is a large crowd of people in the vicinity (Latane & Darley, 1968). Whether a bystander helps someone depends on their self-interest, mood, and empathetic concern (Lord, 1997). It is important to address this notion because many people other than myself still have this false sense of security, and an awareness of it could reduce the possible negative outcomes of the bystander effect.
Davis and Palladino (1997) define the bystander effect as the tendency for a group of bystanders to be less likely than an individual to help a person in trouble. A bystander experiences qualms with the possibility of embarrassment, not knowing how to help and very often experiences a diffusion of responsibility (Davis and Palladino, 1997). The famous incident that sparked the concern of the possibility of bystander apathy (essentially ignoring a person in trouble) was the murder of Kitty Genovese. In 1964, she was publicly stabbed to death while people watched from their apartments and did nothing to help her (Davis and Palladino, 1997). Obviously, this event was cause for public concern. John Darley and Bibb Latane, two social psychologists researched the phenomenon and discovered the reasons for why this happens in our society. They demonstrated that helping behavior follows a model of intervention or a decision tree model, that involves five stages, noticing the problem, deciding if it is an emergency, taking responsibility, deciding what to do, and taking action to help. So when a person is in trouble they are better off to be around one or two people than in a crowd of people. As the group size increases a person’s sense of responsibility is decreased because they essentially feel that "someone else will do something" (Latane and Darley, 1968).
I have always felt safer around the "macho" men (Army guy, body builder, athlete), a doctor, nurse or police officer simply because they are strong and trained to help you. A stronger seeming man is again a false sense of security. According to research done by Tice and Baumeister (1985), a highly masculine man is actually less likely to help someone in trouble. Essentially a highly masculine man, or "macho man" is less likely to intervene in a situation unless it is clearly defined as an emergency because they risk embarrassment. The explanation for this is a stereotypically make concern with "keeping their cool", and not seeming to overact (Latane and Darley, 1968). According to Latane and Darley (1968), there is actually no evidence of any gender differences in helping behavior, however there are differences in terms of the competence of the bystander. According to research by Cramer, McMaster, Bartell, and Dragna (1988) feeling safer around a person who is trained to help in an emergency is warranted because they are more likely to help. So a police officer, doctor or nurse are bystanders who would help in an emergency situation because they feel competent (Cramer, et al, 1988).
Research done by Gottleib and Carver (1979) demonstrates the possibility of reducing bystander apathy, or a person’s unwillingness to help. Their research showed that if there is a chance that a bystander will have to face the person in trouble again, they are more likely to help them. They further found that like Darley and Latane found, the bystander effect is weakened if they are aquatinted with the person in trouble. Gottleib and Carver concluded that the bystander effect reliably occurs only under conditions of anonymity (Gottleib and Carver, 1979). A person is unable to ignore someone in need if they risk interacting with him in the future. A person who is contemplating helping someone in trouble is mindful of the gains, and the consequences of doing so. It seems that those costs and benefits are weighed before helping someone in need.
Interestingly, when a person is in a good mood they are more likely to help someone in trouble. This is so consistent that researchers have termed it "the warm glow of good will" a notion discovered by Berkowitz and Connor in 1969 (Lord, 1997). People who are in a good mood tend to regard the world more positively, which enables them to focus on the gains of helping in a situation. Furthermore people in a good mood want to seem like good people, so they help as a way to gain praise, and reinforcement (Berkowitz 1987; Gibbons & Wicklund, 1982). Researchers have even found that helping a person can improve a negative mood (Cunningham, Steinburg, & Grev, 1980) but people are not likely to help if their mood cannot be improved from the helping.
When a bystander is determining whether or not to help in an emergency situation they are going through a process of decision making theorized and termed by Latane and Darley as the Decision Tree Model Of Helping. In this process a person must first notice that there is an emergency, and actually interpret it as an emergency (Lord, 1997). Once a person has deemed the situation an emergency they are significantly influenced by the amount of people that are present which is the bystander effect. If there are many people it is at this point that a person’s sense of responsibility diffuses. The possible problem with this, as seen in the Kitty Genovese case, everybody in the crowd senses of responsibility diffuse leaving no one to help. If there are a few people or if the bystander is alone, then apathy does not occur according to research (Latane & Darley, 1968). This is because the bystander feels responsible, and fears feelings of guilt. Once the bystander has taken responsibility they must feel capable of offering assistance and then something can be done. This process is what Latane and Darley theorize that bystanders go through when faced with an emergency situation.
The bystander effect is a real phenomenon and there are incidents that occur today even with an awareness of the possible consequences of it. In June of this past summer there was a significant occurrence in Central Park during a Puerto Rican Day parade in Fifth Avenue. A mob of men were attacking women, robbing them and throwing water on them. This was in the middle of the day, when there were hundreds of people around watching. The women went to the police but they were ignoring the commotion. This is a recent example of the power of the bystander effect. The more people that were there, the fewer people were willing to help. Disturbingly however, the police officers were not. The bystander effect can have serious consequences if people are not aware of its force in a situation.
The bystander effect is a real and possibly dangerous phenomenon. I think that people should be more aware of the consequences of it, and perhaps there will be fewer incidences of people not being helped. I think that if people are mindful of the latter influences on helping behavior then there will be less bystander apathy. Latane and Darley were the pioneers of this notion and there research central to the understanding of the bystander effect. Today people are still comforted by the presence of many people, especially at night, or in an alley, it is important that they are aware that being around crowds of people in a potentially dangerous situation is not always safe.
References
Berkowitz, L. (1969). The frustration aggression hypothesis. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Roots of Aggression: A re-examination of the frustration-aggression hypothesis (pp. 1-28). New York: Atherton
Berkowitz L. (1987). Mood, self-awareness, and willingness to help. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 721-729.
Cramer, R., McMaster, M., Bartell, P., &Dragna, M. (1988). Subject Competence and Minimization of the bystander effect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, 1132-1148.
Cunningham, M.R. (1979). Weather, mood, and helping behavior: Quasi experiments with the sunshine samaritan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1947-1956.
Davis, S., Palledino, J., (1997). Psychology, second edition (pp. 659-670). Prentice-Hall, Inc. Simon & Schuster, New Jersey.
Gottleib, J., Carver, C. (1980). Anticipation of future interaction and the bystander effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16, 253-260.
Latane, D., Darley, J. (1968). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? NY: Appelton-Centruy-Crofts.
Latane, B., & Darley, J.M. (1976). Help in a crisis: Bystander response to an emergency. In J.W. Thibaut & J.T. Spence (Eds.), Contemporary topics in social psychology (pp. 309-332). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
Lord, C. (1997). Social psychology. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. (454-489).
Tice, D., Baumeister, R. (1985). Masculinity inhibits helping in emergencies: Personality does predict the bystander effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 420-428.
http://www.lihistory.com/8/hs/818a.htm "The killing of Kitty Genovese" March, 13, 1964.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/06/14/central.park.assault.01/ "More woman and girls tell of attacks by mob of men in New York"June 14, 2000.
